Hispaniola examines the early years of the contact period in the Caribbean and in narrative form reconstructs the social and political organization of the Ta&iactue;no.

Focuses on little-known moments in history when two cultures--previously unknown or little known to each other--met, and altered the course of history.

Views of the modern Caribbean have been constructed by a fiction of the absent aboriginal. Yet, all across the Caribbean Basin, individuals and communities are reasserting their identities as indigenous peoples, from Carib communities in the Lesser Antilles, the Garifuna of Central America, and the Taíno of the Greater Antilles, to members of the Caribbean diaspora. Far from extinction, or permanent marginality, the region is witnessing a resurgence of native identification and organization. This is the only volume to date that focuses concerted attention on a phenomenon that can no longer be ignored. Territories covered include Belize, Cuba, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, French Guiana, Guyana, St. Vincent, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Puerto Rican diaspora. Writing from a range of contemporary perspectives on indigenous presence, identities, the struggle for rights, relations with the nation-state, and globalization, fourteen scholars, including four indigenous representatives, contribute to this unique testament to cultural survival. This book will be indispensable to students of Caribbean history and anthropology, indigenous studies, ethnicity, and globalization.

"A survey of the current state of study of indigenous Caribbean people by archaeologists, historians, and anthropologists. . . . Emphasizes that even though indigenous people were the victims of genocide, they helped to establish a persistent pattern of relations between other Caribbean settlers and their environment, and became central symbols of Caribbean identity and resistance to colonialism. . . . Strongly recommended for every library concerned with Caribbean and native American studies."--Choice "An excellent introduction to native peoples of the Caribbean region. . . . Will be useful to anthropologists, historians, and other social scientists working in the Caribbean."--Jerald T. Milanich, Florida Museum of Natural History This volume brings together nineteen Caribbean specialists to produce the first general introduction to the indigenous peoples of that region. Writing for both general and academic audiences, contributors provide an authoritative, up-to-date picture of these fascinating peoples--their social organization, religion, language, lifeways, and contribution to the culture of their modern descendants--in what is ultimately a comprehensive reader on Caribbean archaeology, ethnohistory, and ethnology. CONTENTS 1. Introduction, Samuel M. Wilson Part 1: Background to the Archaeology and Ethnohistory of the Caribbean 2. The Study of Aboriginal Peoples: Multiple Ways of Knowing, Ricardo Alegría 3. The Lesser Antilles Before Columbus, Louis Allaire Part 2: The Encounter 4. The Biological Impacts of 1492, Richard L. Cunningham 5. The Salt River Site, St. Croix, at the Time of the Encounter, Birgit Faber Morse 6. European Views of the Aboriginal Population, Alissandra Cummins Part 3: The First Migration of Village Farmers, 500 B.C. to A.D. 800 7. Settlement Strategies in the Early Ceramic Age, Jay B. Haviser 8. The Ceramics, Art, and Material Culture of the Early Ceramic Period in the Caribbean Islands, Elizabeth Righter 9. Religious Beliefs of the Saladoid People, Miguel Rodríguez 10. Maritime Trade in the Prehistoric Eastern Caribbean, David R. Watters 11. Notes on Ancient Caribbean Art and Mythology, Henry Petitjean Roget Part 4: The Taino of the Greater Antilles on the Eve of Conquest 12. "No Man (or Woman) Is an Island": Elements of Taino Social Organization, William F. Keegan 13. Taino, Island Carib, and Prehistoric Amerindian Economies in the West Indies: Tropical Forest Adaptations to Island Environments, James B. Petersen 14. The Material Culture of the Taino Indians, Ignacio Olazagasti 15. The Taino Cosmos, José R. Oliver 16. Some Observations on the Taino Language, Arnold R. Highfield 17. The Taino Vision: A Study in the Exchange of Misunderstanding, Henry Petitjean Roget Part 5: The Island Caribs of the Lesser Antilles 18. The Caribs of the Lesser Antilles, Louis Allaire 19. Language and Gender among the Kalinago of 15th Century St. Croix, Vincent O. Cooper Part 6: Indigenous Resistance and Survival 20. The Garifuna of Central America, Nancie L. Gonzalez 21. The Legacy of the Indigenous People of the Caribbean, Samuel M. Wilson 22. Five Hundred Years of Indigenous Resistance, Garnette Joseph Samuel M. Wilson is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Texas, Austin. He is author of Hispaniola: Caribbean Chiefdoms in the Age of Columbus (1990), coeditor of Ethnohistory and Archaeology: Approaches to Postcontact Change in the Americas (1993), and a contributing editor and columnist for Natural History magazine.

In 1493 Christopher Columbus led a fleet of 17 ships and more than 1200 men to found a royal trading colony in America. Columbus had high hopes for his settlement, which he named La Isabela after the queen of Spain, but just five years later it was in ruins. It remains important, however, as the first site of European settlement in America and the first place of sustained interaction between Europeans and the indigenous Tainos. Kathleen Deagan and Jose Maria Cruxent tell the story of this historic enterprise. Drawing on their ten-year archaeological investigation of the site of La Isabela, along with research into Columbus-era documents, they contrast Spanish expectations of America with the actual events and living conditions at America's first European town. Deagan and Cruxent argue that La Isabela failed not because Columbus was a poor planner but because his vision of America was grounded in European experience and could not be sustained in the face of the realities of American life. Explaining that the original Spanish economic and social frameworks for colonization had to be altered in America in response to the American landscape and the non-elite Spanish and Taino people who occupied it, they shed light on larger questions of American colonialism and the development of Euro-American cultural identity.

Volume 1 of the General History of the Caribbean relates to the history of the origins of the earliest Caribbean people, and analyses their various political, social, cultural and economic organizations over time. This volume investigates the movement of Paleoindians into the islands, and looks at the agricultural societies which developed. It then explores the indigenous societies at the time of the Spanish Conquest, the hierarchy of the chiefdoms, and the development of slavery.

Locates the historical origins of modern global humanitarianism in the recurrent conflict over the ethical treatment of non-Europeans.

This is the first in a six-volume publication which examines the history of the Caribbean, its people and landscape on a thematic basis. This volume covers the history of the origins of the earliest Caribbean peoples and analyses their various political, social, cultural and economic organisations over time, in and around the region. Topics covered include: ethnohistorical research; biogeographic teleconnections; the Palaeoindians in Cuba and surrounding regions; agricultural societies; indigenous societies at the time of the Spanish Conquest; the hierarchy of chiefdoms; and the development of slavery.

This volume brings together examples of the best research to address the complexity of the Caribbean past.

On the Edge: Writing the Border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic is a literary and cultural history which brings to the fore a compelling but, so far, largely neglected body of work which has the politics of borderline-crossing as well as the poetics of borderland-dwelling on Hispaniola at its core. Over thirty fictional and non-fictional literary texts (novels, biographical narratives, memoirs, plays, poems, and travel writing), are given detailed attention alongside journalism, geo-political-historical accounts of the status quo on the island, and striking visual interventions (films, sculptures, paintings, photographs, videos and artistic performances), many of which are sustained and complemented by different forms of writing (newspaper cuttings, graffiti, captions, song lyrics, screenplay, tattoos). Dominican, Dominican-American, Haitian and Haitian-American writers and artists are put in dialogue with authors who were born in Europe, the rest of the Americas, Algeria, New Zealand, and Japan in order to illuminate some of the processes and histories that have woven and continue to weave the texture of the borderland and the complex web of border relations on the island. Particular attention is paid to the causes, unfolding, and immediate aftermath of the 1791 slave revolt, the 1937 massacre of Haitians and Haitian-Dominicans in the Dominican Northern borderland as well as to recent events and topical issues such as the 2010 earthquake, migration, and environmental degradation. On the Edge is an invaluable multicultural archive for those who want to engage fully with the past and present of Hispaniola and refuse to comply with the idea that an acceptable future is unattainable.